Acceptance
by LadyDivine91
Summary: While waiting for his husband to finish up a job at a local library, Crowley runs into a little girl with a problem he can relate to. Aziraphale x Crowley


**Notes:**

**I'm a little soft for Crowley interacting with kids. I do not apologize. XD**

"_Uggggggggh_!" Crowley groans, long and obnoxious, like a toddler throwing a tantrum. "Why did you have to drag me to a _library_, of all places?"

Aziraphale side-eyes his husband, gasping in offense. "I _didn't_! You stopped me as I left and begged me to bring you!"

"But if I'd known you were going to the library …!"

"Those were the first words out of my mouth! I literally said, and I quote - _I'm headed to Tooting Library. Be back in an hour_!"

"Oh, yeah. Right. That's where the hiccup came from."

"What do you mean?"

"I couldn't get past the name." Crowley chuckles. "_Tooting_."

"Oh for Heaven's sake." Aziraphale reaches for the door handle but Crowley gets to it first, opening the door for his husband the way he has taken to lately – one of many small habits he developed the moment they said _I do_.

"Anyway, not my fault," Crowley declares, following him inside.

"What!?"

"And I'm glad we've agreed there was a misunderstanding. But now that we're here, what am I supposed to do?"

"Well, call me an old silly, but this is a _library. _A place of higher learning." Aziraphale leads Crowley through the bookcases to the children's section, where he's been commissioned to help sort through the older books in their collection to see if they're worth anything. "You could _read_."

Crowley snorts in objection. "_Pass_."

Aziraphale scans the room, looking past the books, books, and more books, searching for anything that might occupy his disruptive demon for a spell. "There's a computer in the corner."

"Meh. I have an iPhone."

"There's a mini theater. It looks like they're playing _The Adventures of Paddington Bear_. That sounds like it might be up your alley."

"And why's that? Because he's cute and cuddly?"

"Because I find him as hard to swallow as a bag of wet chips."

"_Rude_."

Aziraphale sighs. "There are coloring pages and crayons on that table over there."

"Are you _kidding me_?"

"You're the one who used to _fraternize_ with Renaissance painters. All those nudes of Lucifer you _inspired_. Maybe you could try a hand at being a part of the artistic process with your clothes _on_ for a change."

Crowley chooses to neither confirm nor deny, overlooking his angel's spiteful tone in favor of examining the little round table and equally tiny chairs, the assortment of black and white pictures available to color and two brand new boxes of 64 crayons. After a moment of scrutiny, and knowing that his options are limited, Crowley shrugs. "Yeah. All right."

"Good. Now please remember there will be children about."

Crowley spins the largest of the small chairs around and straddles it. "Yeah? _And_?"

"Keep the gore to a minimum."

"You say that as if children don't love gore."

"They don't!"

"They do! In fact, most kids under the age of twelve can imagine up stuff way scarier than I could ever come up with, I'll tell you that."

Aziraphale scoffs. "How do you figure? Cite your source."

"You obviously didn't spend the kind of time with Warlock that I did, angel," Crowley mutters, grabbing a red crayon from the box and starting in on a picture of King William III, remastering it to depict how the monarch looked on his death bed, wasting away from pneumonia after suffering from a broken collarbone, a consequence of falling off his horse.

Aziraphale considers Crowley's explanation, his eyes bouncing back and forth as he tosses it about in his head. "Fair point. Now sit tight, don't wander off, and play nice with the other children. I'll be back in an hour."

"Toodles," Crowley says, thinking, _'But there are no other children.'_ He grins and grabs another picture, this one of Queen Anne, and eagerly begins another vulgar rendition.

* * *

Aziraphale's promised hour passes and Crowley has blown through all the coloring pages. He looks at his stack of dead monarchs and sighs. It was rather inconsiderate of him to color them all, he realizes, but he's so damned _bored_. He snaps his fingers, returning the pages to their previous pristine and uncolored conditions when a squeaky voice says, "I like your glasses."

Crowley looks up and sees a girl sitting across from him. How she managed to sneak up on him in this big, open room, with no one else in it but himself (being ten a.m. on a Tuesday morning when most kids are in school) he has no idea, but nonetheless, there she is, smiling at him, wearing a bright pink frock and a pair of dark sunglasses with cat eye frames.

"I like yours, too," he says.

"Thanks." She pinches her lips together, flustered by the compliment. "May I ask you a question?"

"Yes, you may, but only because you're being so polite."

"Are you blind?"

Crowley shakes his head. "Nah. I just don't like people looking at my eyes. It makes them uncomfortable."

"Same."

Crowley raises a quizzical brow. "Really?"

"Yeah." She reaches up and adjusts her frames, pushing them unnecessarily up her nose. "I have this thing. It's called heterochromia iridis."

"Wow. Those are some big words for such a little girl."

"It just means that my eyes have different colors. I'm starting school soon, and my mum thinks it'll freak the kids out. But I think it's cool."

"I'm sure it is. May I see?"

"Um …" Crowley can't see her eyes. Her lenses are as dark as his. But he can see her eyebrows moving up and down as she deliberates between yes and no. But she shrugs to herself and says, "Okay," taking off her glasses with her eyes closed. When she opens them, Crowley can see why some mortals might be bothered.

Not because her eyes are grotesque. Actually, the combination of brown, hazel, and blue that her right eye contains in defined segments like a pie chart, her left eye blue-green and much darker than her right, is quite mesmerizing.

But because mortals can be stupid when confronted with something different than themselves.

But because mortals are easily frightened by the slightest things.

"I like them," Crowley says, giving her a smile.

"Do you really?"

"I do."

"Thanks."

"It's a shame you have to hide those eyes. I think they're incredible."

"Me, too." She sits up straighter, her confidence growing. "I think they're special. And I like being special, but it gets lonely."

"Why's that?"

She looks down at her glasses, folding them carefully and setting them in front of her. "I've never seen someone else like me. Not in real life. Just in pictures they show at the doctor's office. What I have is rare, but I know other people have it. It gets easy to forget sometimes. I wish I could see one other person with eyes like mine. Not even like mine, just … different."

"I see," Crowley says, chewing his lower lip. He sits up in his chair and takes a quick glance around. Still nobody else there, not as far as he can see anyway. He leans forward, nearly touching her forehead with his own across this thimble of a table. "I might be able to help you with that."

The girl peeks up at him, catches her reflection in his lenses, and smiles. "Really?"

"A-ha. If I show you something, promise not to _freak out_?"

She giggles at the reference. "I promise."

"And don't. tell. anyone."

"I won't."

"Cross your heart?"

"And hope to die!"

_'Don't hope that,'_ Crowley thinks, taking off his glasses the same way she did, with his eyes closed. When he opens his eyes and fixes them on her, her jaw drops, but her stunned expression gets immediately replaced by the widest smile he's ever seen on a child.

On anyone, really.

Except his Aziraphale.

"No way those are your real eyes!" she says, grinning with glee. "Those have to be contact lenses!"

"Nope. They're real. They're a might bit rarer than yours, but they're real."

"I'll bet!" she says. Suddenly, her whole face lights up. "Wait! I know this!" The girl reaches into her pocket and pulls out a phone. She swipes the screen, goes to Google, and types. When she finds what she's looking for, she turns the screen to Crowley. "You have this, don't you?"

Crowley peers at the screen, at the picture she looked up of a pupil deformity called 'coloboma'. She's right. For a mortal deformity, it does look kind of like his eyes. He doesn't think he could get away with not wearing his glasses and claiming this condition. The otherworldly aura of his eyes is unmistakable to most mortals.

Curious that this little girl doesn't seem to catch it.

"Close enough," he says. "You sure do know a lot about this stuff."

The girl sighs deeply like a sage, old witch, and stows her phone in her pocket. "I've been dealing with eye doctors for a while now. It's become an occupational hazard."

"I can see that."

"So you and I ... we're the same, aren't we?"

"In a manner of speaking." Crowley smiles, but it's sadder than the rest. _'No,'_ he thinks. '_If all goes well, in 80 years, Heaven will have you.'_

"Lizzie? Dearest? Where are you?"

"That's my mum," Lizzie whispers to Crowley as if it's a huge secret. "I'm here, Mum!" she calls.

"Come along! We have to go!"

"Coming! It was nice to meet you, mister," she says, offering Crowley her hand. Crowley doesn't hesitate to shake it.

"Nice to me you, too. Lizzie."

Crowley watches Lizzie double check her pockets for her phone, then collect her glasses. She considers them a second but doesn't put them back on. Instead, she slides them in her pocket, then skips away toward the front door. Crowley doesn't know if she's going to put them on outside, or if her mum will make her. But he'd rather believe that she doesn't, and that she won't from this day forward.

All because she met a demon at a coloring table in a library called Tooting.

"It seems you made a friend," Aziraphale says, miracling up an adult-sized chair and sitting down in it.

"I guess so." Crowley starts fussing with the coloring pages, stacking them in order by dates of reign and setting them neatly to one side. He reaches for his glasses resting on the table, but Aziraphale catches his hand before he can slip them on.

"Is something bothering you, dearest?" he asks, tilting his head to catch his husband's eyes. "You seem a little upset."

"That depends ... how much of that did you hear?"

"All of it. I came out of the office right as Lizzie sat down."

"And you didn't think to rescue her from me?"

"Ah, you see, that's self-pity talking. Children are the last people on this planet who need rescuing from _you_, my dear. Besides, I wanted to see what the two of you would do."

Crowley shakes his head. He looks from Aziraphale's eyes down to his glasses, the blacker than black lenses he orders special absorbing the mid-morning sun and reflecting it back as a cast of false midnight. "I could have snapped my fingers and fixed it for her. That would have been a good thing, wouldn't it? A blessing? No possibility of kids making fun of her, no more helicopter parents forcing her to wear those glasses. But it just … it didn't feel right."

"It wouldn't have been," Aziraphale says. "Not every problem in the world requires a magical fix. In fact, not every problem is a problem."

"Now, you see, that's just ridiculous!" Crowley snaps.

"Why is that?"

"Because a problem is a problem. By its very nature, but its very name. That's why we call them _problems_. And what she has is a _problem_."

"She did have a problem, but it wasn't her eyes."

"What was it then?" Crowley grouses, growing tired of Aziraphale trying to help him find the answer instead of outright telling him what it is. Crowley recognizes that that's Aziraphale's job in a nutshell - to inspire humans to solve their problems.

But Crowley's not human. He needs a bit more help finding the answers.

"She's lonely. Or she _was_. She wanted to find someone like her, to feel less alone in the world. And she did. She found you. And you found her, I'd say, whether you knew you needed to or not. It's a power that humans have that angels – and demons, I imagine – find difficult to comprehend. We're so used to snapping our fingers and changing things that the steps in between are lost on us."

"And that power is …?"

"Making a connection. Sometimes the solution to a problem isn't in the fixing. It's in finding someone who understands. As immortal beings on this planet, weaving our way in and out of people's lives, it's something we tend to overlook. Something we tend to avoid, really." Aziraphale puts a palm to Crowley's cheek and turns his demon to face him. "I want you to know how proud I am of you."

Crowley starts to roll his eyes but stops. He doesn't want to blow this off. He wants his husband to be proud of him. Aziraphale is an Angel of God who chose to risk everything and marry a demon. He should endeavor to make Aziraphale proud every single day.

"You are?"

"I am. I believe you were being tested. And you passed with flying colors."

"Ugh," Crowley groans, grabbing his glasses and putting them on before he does something truly asinine – like become teary eyed. "I guess if you're going to be tested, a library's as good a place as any for it. Higher learning and all that."

"True." Aziraphale makes to stand but Crowley grabs him by the elbow, pulls him gently back to his seat.

"Have I ever told you that you're very good at your job?"

Aziraphale chuckles. "Owning a bookshop?"

"Inspiring humanity. To be honest, it's not something I ever considered. It isn't something … I was ever charged to do. But angels are angels, right? They do good deeds and get in our way. When something would come up and you took a step back, said you couldn't interfere with the _Divine Plan_, I didn't understand. But I think I'm beginning to."

Aziraphale smiles. He leans in and gives his demon a kiss. "It's nice that somebody does. And I'm glad that someone is you. Come along, dear." He stands, grabs his husband's arm and helps him out of his tiny chair. "I think you've had enough library for today."

"Aw, really?" Crowley shakes out his long legs, getting them accustomed to standing upright again. "I was hoping we could pop into the mini theater and, you know, _not_ watch the movie."

Aziraphale laughs. "_And_ you're back."


End file.
